Wow, what one year can do for a position? Actually looks like some useful players in this crop, as opposed to last year where one could just sit back and wait for the 2B to come to them.

...Boston papers now and then suffer a sharp flurry of arithmetic on this score; indeed, for Williams to have distributed all his hits so they did nobody else any good would constitute a feat of placement unparalleled in the annals of selfishness. -Updike

Oh wait a minute......how can a guy who is hitting .290, with 26 HR and 107 RBI get no love? Cantu is sooooo overlooked. Only 23 years old, he can post some monster numbers for years to come with a little bit of positional versatility thrown in. I would put him Top 3, and no lower.

I found this discussion quite interesting and valuable in the fact that over the winter i, along with most of you, will be evaulating players for 2006. To this end I have undertaken a somewhat preliminary anlsis of the 2005 "production" of the various positions.

This analysis involved ranking the various 2b eligible players according to certain measurable criteria. The ones I selected were: BA, R, Hr, RBIs, SB and OPS. In addition since not all players are equally proficient in all categories, I included only the best 5 of the 6 elements for each player.

Of primary interest of course is the potential movement next year of a player from one group to another.
I suspect Roberts will move down to group B and Utley to move up to A and Cano to C at least. Kent's productivity does not seem to have declined in 2005 and there's no physical reason to expect it to decline significantly in 2006.

I'd be interested in the reaction to this process. It's certainly can be done for other positions.

I'm surprised Figgins was so low. Problem with the system is that you don't quantify the differences. Say someone leads all 2B with 40 HR and the next 2B has 25 HR and the next one has 24 HR. You credit the same amout for 15 HR as 1 HR. To get a better idea of where everyone stand you need to find a way to show those differences.